While a dramatic case of whiplash from last week’s episode, “Girl Meets” hits home hard for anyone who’s ever been a girl ages 10 to 22. We’ve all had the fight Riley and Maya had at the beginning. We’ve all had or been the friend with the thin skin and the tight lips, the sharp eyes and sharper ears as we tried to hone in on the next unkind word. Male bullying is often what comes to mind when we think of the word: Underwear pulled over heads and fists flying at our nose. But female bullying has been increasingly more visible, and often feels three times as prevalent. I don’t know anyone with a wet willie story. I spent at least on hour each year of high school getting called into assembly with the rest of the girls in class to discuss some he-said-she-said-my-cellphone-was-stolen-and-then-said nonsense.
It’s a shame then that I have to go right back to the beginning of that paragraph when I say, wow, what a case of whiplash. At best, Riley just spent a half-hour feeling boring and unlikely to amount to anything, and now she’s being bullied for how special and weird and unique she is. At worst, we can look at it as the same issue—Riley feels silly and useless—but now we’re being told it isn’t Cory and Topanga at fault, it’s some unknown and unnamed bully. I don’t think space between the two episodes could really have saved “Meets Rileytown” from feeling strange. It’s still a conflict sweeping in from nowhere and sweeping back out to nowhere again, with no repercussions for anyone at all. But it would have at least helped to see it after a hiatus or a more ensemble episode.
It would also possibly have helped to have had a new character be the anchor. I do think there is much to praise in the show’s decision to leave the bully to the audience’s imagination. It makes the story safely and squarely about Riley as victim, and then heroine. It removes a layer of afterschool special, as the show refuses the traditional sitcom dispensary of stock one-off characters. Blanchard also often turns in some of her best work when she’s left to her own devices—something definitely once again true here. Riley’s breakdown is surprisingly effective, and her speech, pleasantly endearing, even though it triumphs a character trait in Riley I’m never quite sure I buy.
But really, that’s the problem: I don’t buy it. And I’m certainly not the first to cast a critical eye on Riley or Blanchard’s performance of her for that matter. I don’t think it’s the show’s intention to cast the audience in the role of bully, not when there are plenty of artistically interesting reasons for the choice, but it’s a reading too close at hand for comfort, and one that deflated the episode for me a little. Criticism is valid. Riley is a strange, spontaneous creature of many whims, and she shouldn’t try to be someone she isn’t. But much as Farkle is growing, Riley could stand to as well. Last week’s was a celebration of this, of how she could one day be very comfortable and mature while being a little wacky. This week’s feels more like a gentle scolding of anyone who would dare deny her it, even though there’s being silly and there’s being childish, and Riley too often clings to the latter.
It’s a shame, because as Girl Meets World goes, “Meets Rileytown” is probably one of the show’s best paced episodes. By nature of telling a focused story with multiple locations built into the problem, the show moved easily between sets tonight, finding natural transitions and ways of upping the tension. Cory and Topanga also felt well utilized, wanting to step in but also understanding that this was a peer affair and—barring a peer failure to resolve it—best left to Riley and Maya. Last week I complained that they vanished, but this was really all I needed: A firm clue that they were aware, and watching, but also aware that their roles as parents are swiftly changing. The inclusion of the Burr-Hamilton duel also made for an inspired stage for Carpenter and Blanchard, turning a potentially unproductive and boring argument delightful and visual, all while emphasizing just what makes these two characters work well together. Only they could end up in this scenario; only they could enjoy it so much, and yet play it deadly serious. But while the problem may only affect those of us who have been less than completely sold on Riley (or Blanchard), it soured the episode for me. Not fully, not even intensely—I really am much more bothered by the 180 in the season plot. But enough to be taken out of the confrontation scene, even with Maya’s lovely closer.
Bullying episodes are tough. Every show has one. Every person has had one or been one. The disconnect between these two, the fiction with its necessary easy resolution, and the reality with its messy open wound, doesn’t really lend itself to a teaching episode. Riley’s answer to her problem would not have worked at my school, in any of the fiascos we had, and it’s hard to imagine a real life bully that would have stood there and accepted it like the camera did. But perhaps that’s not what television is for. It’s nice to imagine a universe where Rileytown stands up for itself and wins. Where no one gets hurt and no one will ever be hurt again.
Rileytown deserves to wave the freak flag high. So do we all.
